In the display of merchandise in stores and supermarkets, it is important that the products be presented in a neat and orderly manner, with the front packages of a partly depleted column thereof positioned at the front of the display, where they are easily seen and accessed by customers. For this purpose, it is common to utilize display trays provided with spring-actuated pushers that automatically push forward on a column of packages and serve to advance the entire column forwardly each time a package is removed from the front of the display.
In order to re-stock a tray having a spring actuated pusher, the pusher first must be pushed to the rear of the tray and held there while the tray is reloaded. With trays constructed of plastic materials, this can conveniently be done by molding a notch or the like into the back of the tray to engage the retracted pusher and hold it until released by the store personnel after reloading the tray. However, trays formed with wire bases are in widespread and increasing usage because of cost and certain functional advantages, particularly in connection with refrigerated displays. One potential disadvantage of wire base trays, however, lies in comparative difficulty of locking the spring-loaded pusher in a retracted position during restocking. One known technique involves mounting a latching device at the back of the pusher which automatically latches to the back of the tray when the pusher is fully retracted for loading. However, to a large and increasing extent, supermarkets are using very tight planograms for the display of merchandise, with very little space above or at the sides of the trays, at the back. Accordingly, it can be very difficult, and sometimes impossible, to reach to the back of the display to release a latch device after the tray has been loaded with merchandise, because of tightly packed adjacent trays and little overhead clearance. Moreover, the latching device does not function to hold the tray in an intermediate position, which can be desired in certain instances.